Thoughts on the evolution of wireless networks and mobile web 2.0

June 30, 2009

Since I read "less walk more talk" I've become more aware of how mobile communication changes Africa. It's my impression that so far, voice, person to person SMS messaging and some information services again based on SMS (e.g. what are the prices for a certain goods in a certain city) have made the most impact. Also, the "mobile crop insurance" trial I've reported on here is an interesting project. And now, Grameen, Google and MTN have started new services to bring knowledge to rural areas around farming, health tips and trading. Again, based on SMS. Here's a video with some details. And for some more details from the inside perspective, have a look here.

June 29, 2009

Here we go, a long weekend was ahead so I took the opportunity to finally get a netbook for myself and start experimenting with it. After some deliberation, I got an Acer Aspire One 250 with a 3 cell battery and without Bluetooth for €299. Here's my report with my first impressions, how it works with Ubuntu Linux and how easy it is to get 3G connectivity working over a 3G dongle.

First, some specs. The D250 is quipped with a 10.1 inch display, a screen resolution of 1024x600 pixels, a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive.

As I've seen on the original eeePC, Linux runs great on lower performance devices so I was keen to use Linux with this netbook as well. Unfortunately, most netbooks these days seem to be delivered with Windows XP only, so the first exercise was how to get Ubuntu installed without a CD or DVD drive.

Installation

I've seen on the net that eeeBuntu, an adaptation of Ubuntu Linux to the eeePC line of Asus supports the Acer Aspire series as well, so I decided to go for this distribution. To get eeeBuntu installed, the first step is to download the latest CD image from the web page and then install it on a USB memory stick that has a capacity of at least 1GB. Installing the image from Windows requires "unetbootin", a little tool that can be downloaded from the site as well. Once installed on the USB memory stick, the remaining procedure is pretty much straight forward as well. During a restart of the netbook, pressing the F10 key leads to the BIOS configuration menu where the boot device order can be changed to prefer USB media over the built in hard drive. The netbook then boots from the USB stick and enters the installation program. The first and crucial step is to partition the internal hard drive. To my great surprise and pleasure, it is not necessary to delete Windows from the hard drive. Instead, the Ubuntu partition manager allows to reduce the size of the Windows partition to make room for an extra partition for Linux. I evenly split the 160 GB between the two operating systems and I was up and running with both within a couple of minutes. Very nicely done, two thumbs up!

Hardware Compatibility

After booting for the first time, eeeBuntu configures itself for the hardware it finds. Most importantly, the graphics chip and the Wi-Fi were configured correctly and I could use the system right away without tweaking anything. The two devices that were not detected correctly and has since then resisted all attempts to get it working are the built in web cam and the Ethernet card. They work fine under Windows but won't do a thing under eeeBuntu. Still under investigation...

Fist impressions

After using the system for a day now, installing and configuring the desktop and the programs as I would like to have them, I am very impressed by the speed and stability of the system. Programs such as Firefox, Gimp and Openoffice load much faster than on my full size Windows XP notebook. One of the important benchmarks for me is the somewhat power hungry Typepad web editor for my blog. It turns out that it works great on the netbook, only marking text is a bit slow. Seems to be a Firefox issue, however, as the CPU utilisation remains low. Also, the startup time of the system is impressive. After a little less than one minute, the system is up and running. As you can see on the picture on the left, I created this blog post on the netbook to get a feeling for the keyboard. It's slightly smaller than a standard keyboard but after a couple of minutes I can easly and quickly type with 10 fingers with a similar speed as on a standard size keyboard. An absolute must for me!

So much for this post. In part 2, I'll go into the details of how to connect to the Internet with a 3G USB dongle or mobile phone and other things I found usable or not so usable over the first couple of days. Also an important question: How happy would a normob be with Ubuntu compared to Windows XP? To be continued.

June 27, 2009

Two companies have made some interesting network usage statistics available recently. In the chart in this post, Verizon states that in December 2008, they transferred around 4.000 terabytes of data through their network. Ed Candy of Three in the UK reported 1.000 terabytes for the same month in his presentation during the Forum Oxford Conference. Incredible numbers, but how much is that on a day to day basis?

Let's do some maths. 1.000 divided by 30 days is 33.3 terabytes per day. Further divided by 24 hours of the day, by 60 minutes and 60 seconds, this amounts to around 3.85 GBit/s. During busy hour, traffic on the Internet is around twice the average as per the DE-CIX Traffic statistics shown here. That would bring peak traffic somewhere near 8 Gibt/s.

Let's further divide that number by how many cell sites an operator has. In the case of Vodafone Germany, it's around 13.000, so let's assume Three in the UK has around 8.000 to make the number low. A throughput of 8 Gibt/s divided by 8.000 cell sites is 1 MBit/s. As a cell has usually three sectors, that number has to be divided by 3. Hence, the average sector throughput during busy hour is around 0.3 MBit/s.

That's an average value of course. In conference presentations I have heard that cells in urban areas carry a lot more than the average. That's both good and bad news. The bad news is that capacity limits will appear here sooner. The good news is the number of base stations that have to be upgraded once the capacity of the current buildout is reached by adding a carrier or to add more base station sites is limited.

So the numbers quoted in the presentations seem quite realistic to me and also indicate that there is still quite soom room left to breathe capacity wise.

June 25, 2009

I know, toy mobile phones have been around for quite a while to prepare the kids for their first real one... But now, there are even toy Blackberries. See and click on the picture on the left I have taken in the supermarket around the corner. You can never start early enough...

June 24, 2009

When reflecting a bit on innovation in the carrier space today, I noticed that Sprint in the US, despite all it's financial turmoils and customers leaving in the millions is not only innovating in the "me, too" fashion but is also going ways others are not going. Here are my examples:

The Amazon Kindle, so far only available on Sprint's EV-Do 3G network is a unique differentiator. Maybe not for the carrier to subscriber relationship but for attracting similar applications and companies they can work with in the future.

The Palm Pre has received lots of good marks already before its launch and I wonder what made Palm select Sprint and not one of the other carriers to launch their new device with. Maybe because AT&T's got the iPhone, T-Mobile the GPhone and so on, so Sprint is probably much more interested in pushing the device.

And WiMAX, not to be forgotten, even if it has been / is in the process of being spawned off to a different company. While long term success with that move is not certain, one positive effect it has had on the industry as a whole is that the other camps had to hurry up with their next generation wireless network plans. I wonder, if Verizon would be as pushy with LTE as they are today if there were no WiMAX from Sprint?

By going those different ways they might or might not be able to pull themselves out of the decline at some point, that remains to be seen. In any case, however, their moves are pushing others forward. Also, some of their ideas might at some point also jump over to other networks. In other words, competition at work.

June 23, 2009

Recently, Opera announced the launch of their new "Unite" service, which transforms their web browser into a combined browser / server so users can't only consume content stored on the net but also put their own content such as pictures, videos, etc online without loosing control. Content opened to the net can be for private use outside the home network, it can be shared with friends or with the general public.

I am happy to see Opera going in this direction as I am one of those people who like to keep control over my private data and store them at home rather than on a server somewhere in the cloud while still having access to it no matter where I am. I've recently given a talk on the evolution of mobile networks at the University of Oxford (slides see here) and I think such Anti-Cloud services will be an interesting way for converged fixed/wireless network operators to make money with in the future.

Opera is not the first to think about such services. Nokia for example has launched a prototype of a web server for mobile phones to share content and interact with other people already three years ago and I'm a glowing fan of the concept. The downside of both concepts is that the device which offers the content is not always available, be it because the notebook is not always switched on or because the mobile phone every now and then ends up in places without network coverage or runs out of battery power. This is where I see fixed/wireless network operators come in, as the web server could run on the home gateway (think DSL modem + Wi-Fi + Femto + services) which is always switched-on and always available.

I wouldn't be surprised if Opera would be looking in this direction as well, their browser suite is already today not only available on the PC and mobile phones but also on game consoles etc., so they are definitely not new to embedded devices, development and deployment.

June 22, 2009

Here are some interesting stats from Vodafone they have published earlier this year on the number of base stations they have in Germany. In the press release they mention that they have more than 20.000 GSM base station covering 99% of the population and 13.000 UMTS base stations covering 80% of the population.

Taking into account their current customer base (or more precise the number of SIM ards) of around 34 million let’s do some maths with the numbers:

For GSM: 34 million customers divided by 20.000 base stations means that each base station on average serves around 1700 customers. Most base stations have three sectors, so each sector covers on average 1700 / 3 = 566 customers.

Number of voice minutes on average per user per month: 111 minutes. So each sector of a base station would on average serve 111 minutes per month * 566 customers = 62900 voice minutes. To count in effects such as busy hour, let’s say those minutes are handled in 15 hours (a gross simplification…) of the day. 62900 / 30 days / 15 hours = 139 voice minutes per sector per hour. Given that most sectors are equipped with 2-3 Transceivers which can each serve between 6 and 8 voice calls would result in more than enough average capacity and still leave ample room for GPRS/EDGE services. Actually, I think the number looks rather low compared to what should be possible. Not sure why that is...

Note that in big cities, the base stations are probably much higher loaded due to the higher population density. That’s easily missed when working with averages.

Concerning the UMTS numbers, it’s a bit difficult to make meaningful similar calculations here. Vodafone says they have 5+ million UMTS customers. That probably means they have that many customers with a 3G phone. However, it says nothing about how many people have locked their phone to 2G for various reasons and also gives no indication on how many people use data intensive 3G Internet access. So I'll leave those numbers as they are for the moment.

June 20, 2009

I’ve asked myself today of how much space there really is in all the different bands being discussed for mobile services in the future compared to the bands used today. Here’s a list of some of them:Digital Dividend Band in Europe:790 – 862 MHz (with a rumored duplex gap of 12 MHz)30 MHz for each direction

Classic 900 MHz band in Europe for GSM880-915 uplink, 925-960 MHz downlink35 MHz for each direction

Classic 1800 MHz band in Europe for GSM1710-1785 (uplink) 1805-1880 (downlink)75 MHz for each directionClassic 2100 MHz band in Europe for UMTS1920-1980 MHz (uplink), 2110-2170 (downlink)60 MHz for each direction

ITU-2000 band for LTE2500-2570 (uplink), 2620-2690 (downlink)70 MHz for each direction

So when comparing these numbers, the European digital dividend band looks pretty small with its 30 MHz. That’s 10 MHz for 3 operators or one operator with 20 MHz and another one with 10. So it won’t even be enough for two network operators wanting to use 20 MHz LTE carriers. Further note: Neither the 3GPP UTRAN spec (TS 25.101) nor the 3GPP LTE spec (TS 36.101) do yet contain an operating band number for this region.

In the US, the digital dividend band seems to be even narrower. Both Verizon and AT&T only have 2x10 MHz chunks. Not a lot of room to maneuver in.

June 19, 2009

Here's an interesting link to Optimus Portugal's IMS offer for their customers, translated into English thanks to the help of Google. Looks like the offer is based on an IMS core of Ericsson and a IMS client of Movial. Since it is the first IMS offer I have seen being deployed in a real network for real customers I took a closer look to see exactly what is offered and how it works:

First, there is no software being deployed on mobile devices, they keep functioning as before. Instead, Optimus uses a PC based IMS client, so their subscribers can make and receive calls from both their mobile phone and their PC. So far, the offer takes the simplest approach: Calls are either received on the mobile device or on the PC, the user has to choose.

While the user is connected to the network with the IMS PC client, other users also online via the PC client can be called for free. This involves presence, i.e. the PC clients can see each other. Also, instant messaging and video calling are free between PC clients.

SMS is interesting, too. While the PC client is active, SMS message are routed to the client and not to the mobile phone. However, this only applies to SMS messages being sent by other Optimus users. SMS message coming from other networks are still delivered to the mobile device. That's probably got something to do with SMS message routing, as SMS Service Centers in other networks can deliver the messages directly to the mobile device without going to an Optimus SMSC first. A bit of a catch.

Another plus they are advertising is that calls from abroad via the PC client are charged at the standard rate as if you were in Portugal. Incoming calls to the PC client would be free, no matter how far you are away from your home country.

It looks like the IMS PC client and the mobile device are still strictly separated and all IMS parts of the system are only used for the PC client. A good way to start working with IMS, especially for mobile operators with fixed line (DSL) assets.

I wonder, however, if this is a bit of a dangerous path for a mobile operator to walk as some fixed line operators could start wondering why interconnection charges are higher even if a call is not delivered via the cellular network but via a fixed line PC client.

Would I be compelled to use the service? Once I am at home I wonder if for free voice and video calls, Skype with its superior voice and video quality would be better for me. SMS might be more convenient to use on the PC as typing is easier but I would still have to keep an eye on the mobile device in order not to miss incoming messages from people using other networks. And for instant messaging, I have a program already in place as well.

So I guess I would try it, with the Optimus IMS client being one more application running in the background, which I hopefully do not forget to switch off before I leave the house or I would not receive incoming calls. A good place to start from, I hope they keep expanding the functionality.

On the device itself, think Microsoft applications on PCs, Java and native applications on mobile devices.

When services and applications are connected, they usually interact with some other part of the network. A web browser for example is only useful because there are web servers on the Internet providing content. Some services and applications are also hybrid. Take Opera Mini for example. The browser is split between a light-weight Java application on the mobile device and a compression proxy somewhere on the net.

And now a fourth place for applications and services is emerging, on femtocells and home gateways. Services under development are automatic multimedia file transfers from/to mobile devices when they enter the femto area, forwarding of messages left by friends on Facebook and elsewhere for when the user returns home, automatic notification of parents when kids have returned home, etc.